Join us for this 2-evening event, which includes delicious food, drinks, and of course the very best thought-provoking and exciting documentaries on the planet.

Theater doors open for seating at 6:30 pm. Come early for dinner or save room for a bite during intermission.

Yelp (With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”)

Directed by: Tiffany Shlain, 2010 USA
Duration: 5 mins

This short film’s full title is Yelp (With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”). Directed by Tiffany Shlain and narrated by Peter Coyote, it is a brief essay (really a rant) about technology and how we need to–as Peter Coyote shouts to the world, “unplug, unplug, unplug, and revisit the present tense.”

Baseball in a Time of Cholera

Directed by: David Darg and Bryn Mooser, 2012 Haiti
Duration: 28 mins

This film isn’t really about either baseball or cholera. Instead, it concentrates on the playfulness and joy of the game as it nudges up against and intermingles with the death and despair of the disease after the 2011 earthquake in Haiti. It’s more a film about incongruities and complexities, unforeseen consequences, and unending hope. It’s also about good intentions that can bring bad results. Ultimately, though, this film is simply about the unending tragedy of poverty.

Chasing Ice

Directed by: Jeff Orlowski, 2012 USA
Duration: 90 mins

In 2005, photographer James Balog set out on an audacious quest: to document the disappearance of glaciers by setting up time-lapse cameras around the world. With temperatures on the rise, his plan worked well as the cameras of his Extreme Ice Survery captured some of the biggest calving incidents ever. But award-winning Chasing Ice isn’t just about the glaciers, it also shows an artist at work. Balog, who has been coming to Mountainfilm for more than a decade, wrestles with a bad knee, faulty equipment, and the existential question of how the collapse of glaciers is a harbinger of our own uncertain future.

Unicorn Sashimi

Directed by: Ben Knight, 2012 USA
Duration: 5 mins

Telluride’s own Felt Soul Media teamed up with Nick Waggoner and Yuki Mayazaki of Sweetgrass Productions to track a wild unicorn in Hokkaido, Japan. But all they found was delicious ramen — and deep, sweet snow.

My Toxic Reality

Directed by: Tom Dusenbery, 2011 USA
Duration: 5 mins

The Goldman Environmental Prize is perhaps the most important—and generous—environmental tribute of its kind with an annual financial award that goes to grassroots environmental heroes from each of the world’s six inhabited continents. My Toxic Reality is about one of the winners, Hilton Kelly, who saw a need for someone to take a stand in his community of Port Arthur, Texas, a place where eight petrochemical refining facilities lord over that town’s residential areas. Hoping to reverse the severe economic and environmental decline of his hometown, and reduce the alarming incidence of respiratory and cancer-related illness, Kelly spent years learning all he could about policies governing industrial pollution. Then he galvanized his community to take action—to clean up historical damage and degradation and protect against future threats.

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

Directed by: Lucy Walker, 2011 Japan
Duration: 40 mins

Academy Award-nominated director Lucy Walker (Waste Land, Mountainfilm 2010) returns with a stunning, visual poem about the ephemeral nature of life and the healing power of Japan's most beloved flower. Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan's recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins. The film features photography by Aaron Phillips and music by Moby.

Song of the Spindle

Directed by: Drew Christie, 2011 USA
Duration: 5 mins

“I think humans could really learn something from us whales,” says one of the two characters in this humorous, animated short that imagines a whimsical conversation between a sperm whale and a man. Guess which one has more wisdom?

Undercity

Directed by: Andrew Wonder, 2010 USA
Duration: 28 mins

Most people come to New York City to see the sights, and understandably they look up. Steve Duncan, a historian and self-described urban explorer, looks down–way down–into the maze of tunnels that run beneath the city. Directed by Andrew Wonder, Undercity, is a short documentary that follows Duncan as he shows us some of the city’s secrets and introduces us to some of the peculiar characters that that lurk below the streets. Not content to explore underground, Duncan sets his sights on some hard-to-reach landmarks above—way above—ground. Before long he is carefully climbing the Wiliamsburg Bridge. It’s a thrilling tour with a high degree of exposure and serious illegality, but Duncan, a confident climber, seems to know what he is doing as he shows us the city from angles rarely before seen.

I Believe I Can Fly

Directed by: Sébastien Montaz-Rosset, 2011 France
Duration: 4 mins

Count on the French for the latest invention in the realm of highlining, speedflying and, er, line jumping? Whatever you call this cross between highlining, bungee jumping, and BASE jumping that filmmaker Séb Montaz-Rosset highlights in this teaser of I Believe I Can Fly (Flight of the Frenchies), it certainly is crazy. And entertaining. As onlookers watch in terror, the Frenchmen have us convinced, if only for a moment, that they can truly fly.

About Mountainfilm

Started in 1979, Mountainfilm in Telluride is one of America’s longest-running film festivals. Through the years, in and out of trends and fads, the Mountainfilm in Telluride Festival has always been best described by one unchanging word: inspiring. Far more than any other adjective, that’s how festival audiences describe their experience.

In addition to screening leading independent documentary films from around the world, the festival includes a full-day symposium on a critical contemporary issue, art and photography exhibits, early morning coffee talks, a book signing party, an ice cream social, student programs and a closing picnic/awards ceremony. Presentations and panels are scheduled throughout the Memorial Day weekend event with a wide diversity of special guests, ranging from artists to adventurers and academics to activists.

Year-round and worldwide, we take a selection of festival films out on the road. We present both single-event and multi-day shows, hosted by a wide array of organizations, including schools and colleges, corporations, community groups and theater operators. Through the tour, we touch the lives of some 20,000 people every year and visit more than 70 locations on five continents.

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